The Centre has cleared the appointment of Justices Aniruddha Bose, A. S. Bopanna, Bhushan Ramkrishna Gavai and Surya Kant as judges of the top court.
With this, the Supreme Court would function at full strength, with 31 judges, including the CJI, after a decade.
Out of the four judges, the government had earlier objected to the recommendation of Justices Bose and Bopanna, which were subsequently discarded by the Collegium.
Of the newly appointed judges, Justice Gavai is slated to become the Chief Justice of India in 2025, a seven-month tenure before his retirement. Justice Gavai, 8th in the combined seniority on an all-India basis of High Court judges, will become only the second judge from the Scheduled Caste community in the history of the SC, after former CJI K.G. Balakrishnan, to occupy the post. He was appointed as a judge of the Bombay High Court on November 14, 2003 and has been working there since.
Justice Bose, Chief Justice of the Jharkhand HC, stands 12th and Justice Bopanna, Chief Justice of the Gauhati HC, 36th, in the seniority list. Justice Bose is originally from the Calcutta High Court while Justice Bopanna is from the Karnataka High Court.
Justice Surya Kant, who was appointed as a judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court on January 9, 2004 and elevated as Chief Justice of Himachal Pradesh High Court on October 5, 2018, stands 11th in the combined seniority list.